You said the magic word ENTITLEMENT. People feel they are entitled to everything. There is no more work ethic in this country. People want to sit
back and collect a paycheck. Case in point:

This lady in my local paper is complaining that she can't afford to make her mortgage payment because the lender has doubled her payment from $2,000
to $4,000 and in January they expect a payment of $11,000. She claims she missed only one mortgage paymet, I find that hard to believe. At this
point I am feeling somewaht bad for her, but wait keep reading. Her and her husband bought the house 4 years ago, but last year got divorced and he
moved out, so the household income has been cut in half. Obviously she can not afford the house on her own and should have sold the house once the
divorce began. But no, she stays in the house because she feels she is entitled to stay in her home. She now expects the government to help her. I
say NO WAY!

Whatever happend to the saying life is not fair. Her circumstances have changed and she is trying to live above her means. In life their are winners
and losers and the middle class is in the middle of the see-saw.

The way I see it is on one side is the winners (wealthy) the other side the losers (poor) and in the middle is the middle class that at any moment
could end up a winner or a loser. One unforseen expense or the loss of a job and you go to the loser side. Find a great job with more pay or hit the
lottery, or start a successful business and you go to the winner side. The beauty of America is that everybody has the opportunity to get to the
winner side, regardless of where you start. But once you feel entitled to have things you will never look to succeed, just sit back and collect.

I work with the youth and this sense of entitlement begins at an early age. Just look at sports when everyone gets a trophy just for participating,
or in school everyone gets a sticker on their paper because they tried. We are raising a society that believes it is okay to just be involved and not
try to suceed. My mother tells a story that when I was a little kid I would play card games with my grandfather. Most of the times he would win and
I would cry because I lost. My mother would tell him to let me win, he would say, "what am I teaching him by letting him win he needs to work harder
to win." Thanks pop for not letting me win I am a much better person today because of you.

Awesome post, great ideas. Even if we had to print more money, the US dollar value wouldnt drop much and every citizen would be happy as hell. Starred
and flagged... great perspective man. Keep up the good work.

While it sounds good, this would be a dumb idea. Why? Because we don't have the money. They don't have to money to buy all of these bad assets,
they're going to have to monetize it which will create more inflation. They've already given 150billion in a 'stimulus' package, this was a bad
idea, and so would be 700billion.

We need a President like Dr. Paul who would limit government spending, and get our balance sheets back in some order before we talked about giving any
money to people. You know congress passed 650 billion for National Defense, I didn't hear anyone complaining then.

There's around 1-2trillion in the sub-prime mess, it will cost more than 700billion before it's over. Trying to prop up these over-valued home
prices is a problem, and won't work. They've got to come down.

I mean seriously, what would all the citizens use 2.3k for? That's how much each citizen would get with what your suggesting. $2.3k. That's it.
Would we save this money? Our personal savings rate is so low, that we could double our average personal saving rate if EVERYONE invested this money
in savings.

We all know that wouldn't happen, people would simply spend it, maybe even to pay their mortgages. Think about that, print money to pay our
mortgages, while the bank makes 2x the principal on interest. All the while food/energy goes up, right before winter.

There will be more trouble, the FDIC will be asking for a bailout before this is over. You better believe they'll get it. Get ready for the baby
boomer's to retire and receive their Social Security/medicare/medicad aid. They're no way in hell we can afford that, all of the Social Security
money has already been spent. They'll have to monetize those funds as well.

I remember a quote from someone, that went something like this, "Oh the people will get their Social Security checks, but it won't be worth
anything"

We're on that path.

Our ONLY hope is to dramatically limit government instead of more government programs. Ron Paul is right. We can't afford the War, we can't afford
all the wasteful spending. We should have been saving money and not spreading ourselves so thin over the past 7 years.

I say let it happen. Let the banks go bankrupt and people loose the houses they can not afford. I am tired of taxpayers paying for all the stupidity
of the masses. Not to mention that the federal income tax is actually illegal. Let it happen. Do not allow any type of black mail bail out to
happen.

I am going to post this on as many threads as I can, because it is time people realize worse things can happen. For example giving all our money and
freedom to the government.

Originally posted by Blacknapkins
I mean seriously, what would all the citizens use 2.3k for? That's how much each citizen would get with what your suggesting. $2.3k.

A family of four with one taxpayer in the home would get $7,000. Your right it would not go very far, but some who have a mortgage payment that is
within thier means (10 - 25% of gross income) might use it to pay thier mortgage up front for 3 - 6 months.

I did state that if this wasn't enough that we might have to ask for more.

...Since Bush took his office EVERYTHING changed. people were demeaned, they lost their jobs, jobs were outsourced ...

To be fair, this actually started before Bush. I saw a lot of it happening in the late 90's, 1999 to 2000 to be exact. I lived in Lexington, Ky at
the time and worked in the business of selling robotics parts to factories. I saw quite a few factories up and leave. I was thinking to myself the
whole time, that our economy is going to suffer. But you can blame it all on one president if you like.

I firmly believe that the banks should not be baled out. The little people spend the money and invest. They are the ones that should be baled out.
The system needs to be cleaned and the banks were too oriented towards profit. The fittests bank institutions will survive.

Originally posted by Anonymous ATS
Her and her husband bought the house 4 years ago, but last year got divorced and he moved out, so the household income has been cut in half.
Obviously she can not afford the house on her own and should have sold the house once the divorce began. But no, she stays in the house because she
feels she is entitled to stay in her home. She now expects the government to help her.

Well she'll probably come out of this government giveaway with a dramatically reduced house payment. She won the house giveaway lottery.

The beauty of America is that everybody has the opportunity to get to the winner side, regardless of where you start. But once you feel entitled to
have things you will never look to succeed, just sit back and collect.

What a wonderful fable you are reciting. Have you ever looked into whether it is true?

By international standards, the United States has an unusually low level of intergenerational mobility: our parents’ income is highly predictive of
our incomes as adults. Intergenerational mobility in the United States is lower than in France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark.
Among high-income countries for which comparable estimates are available, only the United Kingdom had a lower rate of mobility than the United
States.

So the myths you have been spoonfed by your owners would appear to be lies. Lies to keep you in your place, dummed down and hoping to get rich some
day, while not realising that 'that day' will never come.

Government can print new money almost for free anyway (2 cents on the dollar or something stupid). Since they're doing that anyway, why not cash out
a little more by justifying stimulation of the economy. Look at the situation when it was justified last time!! Much less grim..

My economy definately needs to be stimulated right now.. And I don't mean that in a weird way!

>Government can print new money almost for free anyway (2 cents on the
>dollar or something stupid). Since they're doing that anyway, why not cash
>out a little more by justifying stimulation of the economy. Look at the
>situation when it was justified last time!! Much less grim..

Just printing money causes the dollar to depreciate. China, Japan, the UK etc. are already sick and tired of the US printing money and taking out
loans, because their dollar holdings and security holdings are worth less and less. There is already open discussion about divestment of US securities
and currency in both Asia and Europe.

Remember that as the US have become more globalized, jobs have been moved overseas etc, the percentage of foreign goods consumed by the average
american have risen, and as the US dollar sinks, these foreign goods increase in price when the dolar depreciates in value.

The dollar has fallen more than 40 percent since 2001, which means that for average americans, their buying power have been severely reduced. As the
jobs leave the US and production is increasingly moved to Asia, more US dollars are going out and less foreign currency is coming in, which means that
the US has to keep printing money to keep the US economy afloat.

The price of the dollar is set by the market , and if China or Japan decides to divest itself of US dollars, the supply will increase and demand
decrease, meaning that the price of the dolar goes down further, leading to increased inflation in the US, causing the FED to print more money... And
you can pretty much guess the rest...

I wasn't being completely serious.. Only partially.. Because the only reason these kinds of things are "state of the art" economic tactics are
because the people in our government either don't know what they're doing, or they really do know and just don't have the balls to "CHANGE"
things. The C word is feared by all who work in government. All the temporary fixes only prolong the real problems, make them worse, and never
really address the actual causes of our economic woes.

The whole reason the dollar is constantly being devalued is because the central bank can print new money for the goverment at like 2 cents on the
dollar. It has always been an "easy way out". Back when the dollar was first being printed it was valued at orders of magnitude over what it is
today.. We have printing money out of thin-air as a primary cause of the devaluation of the dollar over time. If things don't change, the
devaluation will continue. It is yet another economic problem that NOONE wants to address.

I'm honestly glad the 700B bail-out plan was shot down. It shows that at least some politicians still listen to their constituents.. George Bush can
get in a Tizzy all he wants. I don't think America really cares what George Bush thinks at this point anyway.. Noone really trusts the guy or
anything he sais these days. He is, officially, the most unpopular president in American history. This is supposed to be a government for the
people, by the people. George Bush should be cheering on Democracy in action.. Screw him if he pouts becuase he can't get his way. Noone cares.
This is our country as much as it is his.

We need to replace the leaders who run the economy who failed to do their jobs by not giving ample warnings about this ahead of time. Complete and
total loss of corporate and political accountability have reached as high up in our government as it possibly can. When the Enron scandal took place
there were immediate hearings into what happened. They cooked the books to the tune of 60 some odd million dollars. But this recent failure of the
investment banks involved MANY times that amount! Where were the hearings? Why aren't people being fired? Why hasn't an in-depth investigation
begun into who profited off of the recent mortgage meltdown and investment bank troubles, not to mention who helped cause the meltdowns in the first
place due to corporate greed?

Everyone talks about accountability and oversight, so where are they?
When I read the proposed bill for the first time I was shocked...

This one paragraph should have been justification for throwing out the bill altogether.

Overseeing the program: The bill would establish two oversight boards.

The Financial Stability Oversight Board would be charged with ensuring the policies implemented protect taxpayers and are in the economic interests of
the United States. It will include the Federal Reserve chairman, the Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, the Federal Home Finance Agency
director, the Housing and Urban Development secretary and the Treasury secretary.

A congressional oversight panel would be charged with reviewing the state of financial markets, the regulatory system and the Treasury's use of its
authority under the rescue plan. Sitting on the panel would be 5 outside experts appointed by House and Senate leaders.

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